In my last article, I talked about a Defi / Gaming app called Mobox. For this article, we'll be visiting another app on the Binance Chain with a similar concept. This one is called RuneFarm. It has been open for just under two months, and is heavily inspired by the Diablo game series.
To start off, a little token explanation to hopefully avoid confusion later on. The main token for RuneFarm is called Rune (seen as XRUNE on some markets). Every week, new tokens are generated by the farms and pools, each of which is a separate token type and which are collectively referred to as runes. So, in this article, if I capitalize Rune, I'm referring to XRUNE, otherwise I'm making a reference to the other rune tokens.
As with all the Defi sites, you get started by staking coins or liquidity pool tokens. RuneFarm is mostly internal facing in this regard. They have pools for XRUNE and all of the other rune tokens, but not for any external coins. But you can join in on the liquidity pools with USDT/BUSD, BUSD/BNB, or BTCB/BNB if you don't want to dive in to the rune market right away.
But if you do pick up some runes, you may be interested to know that they have more uses than just staking them in farms and pools. Various runes can be combined and burned to craft items. Items, which, when equipped, can have an effect on your harvest income! And with this, we have the first elements of gamification as players can choose what items to wield when gathering income from their pool and farm investments. You can see in the image below that not all items are the same and there is some randomness in their stats.
Luckily, runes are rather cheap at the moment (most are under $1 USD), so if you don't get what you want the first time around, you can always try your hand at crafting again! There is also an in-game market, where players can sell their items.
If you look closely, you'll notice that items actually have two sets of stats. In the screenshot below, you can see their planned effects for the RPG game that will be developed further along the roadmap.
And speaking of roadmaps, the dev productivity on this project is astounding. Weekly updates with a few minor tweaks during the week. The rune production system is automated, with a new rune being generated once the current rune hits 50k supply. And best of all, the end-user doesn't have to do anything when the farms change production. Once you stake your coins, you'll automatically accumulate runes, even when the production changes! You can come back and harvest them at any time.
So the DeFi side has its foundations mostly complete. The game side will come later, but you for now can can generate characters, craft and equip items, and join guilds (and soon, buy pets!
)https://twitter.com/RuneFarm/status/1395849086612361216?s=20
- RuneFarm
All of this can get a bit confusing, but luckily, the site has an excellent Getting Started guide (https://rune.farm/guide).
The roadmap for this project is glorious, and seeing what has been put together so far, I have no doubt that all of these milestones will be met.
All of the tokens in RuneFarm are deflationary, including XRUNE. Once each rune finishes its production cycle, no more will ever be made again! There will be 33 different runes in total. Eight have completed their production runs and the ninth is well on its way.
If you're looking to make some quick cash by farming and selling tokens, this is probably not the project for you. It is possible to sell generated runes for a decent profit right when they start production, but the window is small before they drop in value to be on par with the other tokens.
And really, in order for the game to be successful, we don't want these individual runes costing too much, as that would hinder the ability for new players to get involved. The real value from RuneFarm comes from a long-term outlook with investments into steady rune accumulation, equipment, pets, and whatever other NFTs come our way.
But if you're looking for something a little different, and interested in the gamified, DeFi world, then RuneFarm is worth further investigation. As I post this, the prices for all the runes made so far are pretty heavily suppressed (under $1 USD), so acquiring a bag to provide liquidity, stake for more runes, and/or use for crafting, shouldn't cost too much.